The Alchemist's Illusion
Page 26
“We can’t hand over Ward to the police for him to end up in jail,” I said. “He doesn’t age. We need time to figure out what to do with him.”
“Take his feet. Hurry. I don’t think the ambulance knows exactly where we are, but the sirens are getting closer.”
We carried Ward to the floor of the passenger side of my truck and tossed the blanket over him that was there to cover Dorian. We were back at the door of the warehouse when the ambulance pulled into the parking lot.
“She’s inside,” Tobias said, jogging alongside them as he took them to the detective.
“Caller mentioned a second person who needed help,” the medics said.
“He’s long gone,” I said. “The man who attacked me and the detective got away.”
Tobias went with Detective Vega in the ambulance, and I hurried home with my captive. Only I didn’t make it nearly that far.
As I pulled out of the parking lot, Ward stirred. Slowly at first, but by the time I’d gotten a few blocks he must have been conscious enough to feel his confined surroundings on the floor of the passenger seat of the Chevy. He grunted and began kicking wildly. Though his arms and legs were tied and he couldn’t move far, he wasn’t affixed to anything. Using his head, he knocked into the gearshift and hit my elbow, sending the steering wheel spinning.
I grasped the steering wheel, trying to gain control as we pitched forward—toward the river.
fifty-eight
I slammed my foot down on the brakes. The truck’s tires bumped over the vegetation at the side of the river.
“What’s happening?” Ward cried. Curled in front of the passenger seat, he was still covered by Dorian’s blanket.
“You should have asked that”—I regained control of the stiff steering wheel and veered away from a fir tree—“before you head-butted me.”
The brakes groaned and the truck stalled. We came to an abrupt stop before we hit the water. I wasn’t sorry to hear Ward’s head knock into the glove box. He groaned and swore.
“I misjudged you.” His voice was muffled under the blanket. “I didn’t take you for a killer.”
“You could say I’m returning the favor.” I ripped the blanket off. Ward’s hair was out of place, revealing his clipped ears.
“I’m sorry you misunderstood my actions back there,” he said. His voice was outwardly calm, but his eyes were afraid. “I wasn’t going to kill you and the detective. I needed to keep you out of the way until I could finish making my plans to get away. I was never going to—”
“Don’t bother lying,” I said. “I know about what you did to Nicolas and Perenelle.”
“Me?” Ward gasped. “It didn’t—”
“I’m going to give you a choice,” I said, an idea forming as I spoke. My heart rate was returning to normal, and I assessed our surroundings. Hulking chunks of steel surrounded us. We’d come to a stop underneath one of Portland’s many bridges. Morning traffic was beginning to hum high overhead, but with our position next to the solid underpinnings of the bridge, none of the cars above could see us.
“A choice,” Ward repeated.
“Give me my cell phone.”
“Sorry, dear, that’s been smashed to bits.”
I reached my hands into his pockets.
“What are you doing?” he protested. “I’m a married man—and that tickles—damn.”
My hand emerged with a cell phone that wasn’t mine.
“You’ll never get it unlocked,” he said.
I studied his face, a mask of smugness between his clipped ears. My gaze fell to his gloved hands that I’d thought caused him pain from arthritis. Before he had time to realize what I was doing, I lunged toward him, pulled the glove off his right hand, and pressed the phone screen to his thumb. He tried to struggle, but he was wedged snugly in between the front seat and dashboard. When I lifted the phone again, the screen was unlocked.
“Don’t go anywhere,” I said as I slipped out the driver’s-side door to make a quick call to Dorian.
Ward glared at me with unconcealed rage when I pulled the truck door shut behind me a few minutes later.
“You’re going to tell me everything,” I said, “or I’m going to turn you in to the police.”
Ward had the audacity to laugh. “I’m the one who’s being held prisoner. Do you really think they’ll—”
“Detective Vega is recovering in the hospital. She has some interesting facts to tell her colleagues, doesn’t she? It’s up to you to convince me not to turn you in. I want to understand what happened, and I want the evidence to clear my friend Tobias from any remaining suspicion in Logan Magnus’s death.”
Ward’s lips turned to a snarl. “It’s Perenelle’s fault, you know. All of it.”
“Tell me.”
“These bonds—” He tugged at his arms behind his back, but he was wedged too tightly into the space in front of the seat to be a threat now that we weren’t moving. “This space isn’t large enough for a grown man.”
“Talk.”
Ward seemed to hover at the edge of indecision for a few seconds, then closed his eyes before speaking. “She killed my daughter,” he said softly. “You have to understand, it’s because of Perenelle that I watched my own daughter die.”
When he opened his eyes, a tear slipped out. “Everything I’ve ever done, I’ve done out of love.”
I resisted the urge to comfort him. It was the terrible curse of immortality to watch children grow old and die. The death of my beloved Ambrose’s son had driven him to madness.
“I know that’s not entirely true,” I said. “I rescued the Flamels from the painting. I’ve spoken to them.”
Ward laughed mirthlessly and a few more tears rolled down his cheek. “It’s the truth, but I suppose as they say these days, it’s not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. When you become an alchemist, nobody ever tells you the truth about it, do they? I’ve been watching you. You’re one of us. And you’re not as happy as you pretend to be. How long have you been alive?”
I looked from the lapping water to the earth we’d disturbed, following the arc of my gaze up the steel bars and bolts to the gray sky above. It was the same water I’d known over three hundred years ago, but industrially forged metal was something I could never have imagined as a child coaxing life from plants. “This isn’t about me.”
“Suit yourself. I can see you’re old enough to understand, even if you haven’t lived enough to understand the anger … The Elixir of Life doesn’t cure ailments. My hands are still deformed from being broken, my ears remain misshapen, and my daughter will always be dead.”
He let the words hang in the air for a few moments. “And gold. Nobody tells you how damnably difficult it is to make.”
“No,” I agreed. “They certainly don’t.”
That broke the ice, at least as much as was possible under our strange circumstances. Ward laughed, and the rest of his story spilled out of him without much prompting. And without much humility either.
He was a genius, he explained, so he thought he should have been able to master transmuting impure metals into gold much more easily once Perenelle showed him it was possible. But he didn’t realize how much purity of intent mattered in alchemy. He became wealthy through other means. Because he’d known Philippe Hayden, he’d been able to become a successful art dealer, both because he’d purchased some of Hayden’s artwork for a pittance and because he’d learned so much about art that he was able to identify talent before artists became famous.
“But people didn’t respect me as they did when I’d been a court alchemist and scryer,” he said. “Claiming to talk to angels has a cachet that knowing about art can’t match.”
“You did much more than understand the art market,” I said. “You manipulated it by finding struggling artists and encouraging them to become forgers.”
“You didn’t have to faux-age paintings that were in the style of Old Masters. You simply had to wait for them to truly age. Though the con was rather unfortunate for the artists you promised wealth to.”
Ward shrugged. At least that’s what I think he was trying to do in his bonds. “It wasn’t quite as simple as waiting. I had to insert false provenances into historical archives that could be ‘found’ in the future. Long after my artists had died, of course.”
“But they could never sue you for breach of contract during their lifetimes, since they knew they were participating in an illegal activity.”
“It worked surprisingly well as a means to becoming a well-known art dealer. I had to reinvent myself in a new city every couple of decades, of course. Then eight months ago … ” His face transformed from pride back to anger. “I saw a painting in an auction house simply titled The Alchemist. But I knew what it was. Who it was. It was Nicolas Flamel. It unnerved me more than words can adequately explain. I looked into the eyes of the man in the painting and had the strongest suspicion that it was Nicolas himself in there. I knew Perenelle was capable of painting people into portraits, but I thought Nicolas had already died.”
I didn’t point out that I knew from Perenelle that Nicolas had nearly been killed by Ward himself. I wanted him to keep talking.
“I had to know what happened,” Ward continued. “I bid on the painting, but lost. I didn’t have enough funds because I’d recently had a financial setback. One of the real Philippe Hayden paintings I’d acquired was declared to be fake because the modern methods of dating artwork showed it was painted long after Hayden was thought dead.” He scoffed. “I couldn’t tell them Hayden was an alchemist, and a woman at that. I had to bow down to the so-called experts’ opinion, leaving me in financial ruin.”
“Why did you bid on the painting if you knew you’d never be able to prove it was a Hayden portrait?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine him wanting to rescue the man he’d tried to kill.
“If Nicolas was really in the painting, I wanted to get him out and ask him to teach me the secrets of transmuting lead into gold properly. I knew there must be a secret I was missing that would make it easier … and I couldn’t have anyone else recognizing him. That’s why I arranged for an old associate to steal the auction house’s records of the painting.”
Foolish man, I thought to myself. If he hadn’t been so intelligent, he would have fit in with the backward alchemists.
“But you lost the bid at auction to Cleo Magnus,” I said, “who wanted the painting for her famous artist father, Logan Magnus. Logan had become interested in the art of alchemy after seeing a painting that intrigued him earlier in the year. Cleo—”
“I love her,” Ward said. “Whatever you do to me, leave Cleo out of this.”
“I believe you,” a voice said from the rocky sand in front of the truck. The person I’d asked Dorian to summon had arrived.
fifty-nine
Auburn tresses swirled around her head, carried by the wind underneath the bridge. She was still in her old clothing, and the fire in her eyes was otherworldly. On the gray morning along the edge of the water, I could have sworn she was a selkie from Scottish mythology. But this was no mythical creature. Perenelle Flamel had arrived.
Perenelle stepped to the side of the car, carrying a satchel under her arm. I thought at first it was Dorian in stone form, but it was the wrong shape.
“For all your faults,” Perenelle said to Ward, “which are legion, you’ve always been a romantic.” She reached out for my hand. “Thank you for calling me here. Your friend called a conveyance that delivered me.”
“Perenelle,” Ward said, “you’re as beautiful as ever. I always thought it was a tragedy you couldn’t reveal your true self. The years have been good to you.”
“After you tried to kill me, you mean.”
“I was young and foolish.”
“And now you are old and foolish. I’ll be putting an end to that.” She reached her hand into the satchel.
“What are you doing?” he cried. “You’re not a killer. You saved me once, long ago. Zoe—” He turned to me, his eyes pleading. “Tell her I’m cooperating!”
“Ward was telling me everything he’s done,” I said. “In exchange for me not turning him in to the police.”
“And not killing me,” Ward added.
Perenelle nodded. She set the bag at her feet.
Ward looked between us and nodded slowly. “Keep Cleo out of this and you have a deal.”
“Why would we need to keep Cleo out of it?” I said, but as I spoke the words, the realization dawned on me. It wasn’t only that Ward loved her and didn’t want her dragged down by association with him.
I thought back to what Perenelle had said about both me and Ward being reckless in our youths. And how Tobias had found a hidden art studio at the Castle. If I assumed Cleo was working with Ward as an art forger, everything about Logan Magnus’s death made sense.
Cleo wasn’t responsible for her father’s murder, but her actions had set in motion his inevitable death. Her father didn’t know Ward had convinced Cleo to become an art forger. But as Isabella had said, Logan suspected what was going on with an art forgery ring in Portland.
“Logan Magnus found out about you,” I said. “He found proof that not only were you running an art forgery ring, but you’d enlisted his own daughter.”
Ward’s chest rose and fell, but he remained silent.
“Silence is the same thing as a lie,” Perenelle said, her voice calm but so cold I shivered.
“How did you convince her to become a forger?” I prompted. “Was it because she’s a failed artist?”
“She wasn’t a failure,” Ward snapped.
“But she wasn’t successful. Not like her father. You convinced her she could get back at the art experts who had shunned her.”
“Experts.” He spat out the word.
“Isabella had built a secret art studio at the Castle, when she was helping Logan establish himself and they needed a space where she could do the first drafts of the pieces he’d finish. She was telling the truth that she hadn’t used it in years. But someone else had. Her daughter. That’s whose paintings the police discovered.”
Ward swore. “They found them?”
“They think they’re Isabella’s right now, but they’ll put it together.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Ward said.
“All these years,” Perenelle said, “and you haven’t changed. Your arrogance … ”
“I’m only being honest.”
“Then continue,” Perenelle said.
Ward nodded and resumed his story. He’d decided to seduce Cleo to get The Alchemist painting. But then he discovered Cleo’s artistic endeavors. Her work was technically competent, but it had no originality; she was like her father and needed a guiding hand. Ward would be that hand, and he convinced her she could get revenge on the art world that had ignored her by becoming his next forger. He wooed her, and even moved to Portland to be near her.
“I had to do something to pay for my relocation,” he said, “so I did what I was good at. I found a young, aspiring artist who called himself Neo. He was almost homeless, finding little respect and even less money. He was all too happy to paint a few copies I suggested, to pull one over on the critics. I set up a small studio for him. We didn’t leave a paper trail—I never do—but Cleo’s ex-boyfriend Archer saw us and figured out what was going on. Archer wanted to ruin me without Cleo knowing it was him, but he underestimated the care I took to make sure I wasn’t connected to Neo. After Archer gave an anonymous tip to the police about the studio, Neo fled and the police seized the artwork, but they neve
r put it together with me. All it did was anger Cleo that Archer had made the accusation. It brought us closer together.”
“And brought you closer to the painting of Nicolas,” Perenelle said.
“I tried to rescue him,” Ward said. “I tried to pull him out of the painting when I visited Logan at the Castle with Cleo, but it didn’t work. What was the secret I missed?”
“The same one you always did,” Perenelle said. “You wanted it for all the wrong reasons. Your intent was lacking. After all these centuries, you still haven’t learned.”
Ward groaned. “You’ll appreciate the irony, Perenelle. Do you know the thing that made me stop trying to get the painting and get Nicolas out? I fell in love with the girl. I didn’t marry Cleo as a con. She’s the best thing that’s happened to me in centuries. She’s innocent, you know. Whatever you think I’ve done, it’s only me.”
“Chivalrous of you to lie,” Perenelle said.
“I tried to corrupt her at first,” he said, “but she always resisted.”
“How did you convince Logan Magnus to swallow toxic paints?” I asked.
“You gave me a choice,” Perenelle said, looking up at the rumbling cars on the bridge above and the clouds rolling in. “It’s so strange, remembering that day as if it were only a few days ago, but awaking in this new world … ”
“I gave him a choice as well,” Ward said. “I appealed to his interest in alchemy—and his ego. I convinced Logan of the connection between art and alchemy, which he was already open to after receiving The Alchemist from Cleo. I told him he’d achieve immortality if he swallowed his pigments. The pain he felt was the path to immortality. I didn’t kill him. He did it to himself.”
“Always rationalizing,” Perenelle said. Wind pushed its way through the open car window, but Perenelle seemed impervious to its chill.
“It’s the truth,” Ward said. “Do you want details to convince you? Logan began raving about how he would rise from the ashes just like the phoenix. When the fool realized he was going to die rather than become immortal, he started babbling about how the phoenix pendant would prove what I had done. He was hardly lucid, but I thought it couldn’t hurt to take the damn charm. I took it with me to the warehouse where I’d been working away from the Castle, thinking I’d dispose of it later with … Well, let’s not talk about that. But the point is that I was attacked.”